The evolution of wireless communication over the past century, since Guglielmo Marconi's 1897 demonstration of radio's ability to provide continuous contact with ships sailing the English Channel, has been remarkable. Since Marconi's discovery, new wireline and wireless communication methods, services and standards have been adopted by people throughout the world. This evolution has been accelerating, particularly over the last ten years, during which the mobile radio communications industry has grown by orders of magnitude, fueled by numerous technological advances that have made portable radio equipment smaller, cheaper and more reliable. The exponential growth of mobile telephony will continue to rise in the coming decades as well, as this wireless network interacts with and eventually overtakes the existing wireline networks.
The United States wireline network today has an equal access feature called Selective Carrier Denial (SCD), a feature that provides the capability for a telephone service provider at the request of a carrier, such as AT&T, to block subscriber access to toll calling on that carrier, but without restricting such subscribers from making local, non-toll calls or calls using other carriers. In particular, SCD allows the wireline provider to selectively inhibit certain carrier-handled calls from those subscribers who have been designated as non-paying subscribers, but allow them to make local and emergency calls without restriction.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently indicated that for safety and security reasons wireless providers in the United States will soon be required to incorporate equal access capability into their wireless systems. Currently, the SCD feature is not available in cellular systems in the United States, such as the PCS 1900.
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to implement the Selective Carrier Denial feature of wireline systems into wireless telephony systems, particularly those of the United States in accordance with the FCC's mandate.
It is a further object of the present invention to incorporate Selective Carrier Denial into cellular systems, restricting subscriber access to particular carriers, groups of carriers or all carriers.